This month marks the 50th anniversary of the bloody military coup which overthrew the government of Salvador Allende, and here’s one of the lesser-known incidents from that period.
On September 10, 1973, an army official drove the wife of Chile’s future dictator and her two youngest children east from Santiago up into the Andes mountains. Their destination was the Chilean army’s mountaineering school, where they would be overnight guests. The facility’s director was Colonel Gustavo Cantuarias, who considered to be a “constitutionalist,” i.e., an officer wanting to keep the armed forces out of politics and not supporting a coup.
Why would General Augusto Pinochet send his family there on the eve of the coup? It is a matter of record that he only signed on to the coup the day before, after being confronted by the commanders of the navy and air force. He was not convinced the coup would be a success, and he did not inform several army generals and colonels of the plan. The army mountaineering school’s proximity to the Argentine border meant that he and his family could flee the country with relative ease.
On the morning of September 11, 1973, Pinochet took his time before arriving at his command post. According to his memoir, El Dia Decisivo, he stopped on the way at the home of his eldest daughter to see his grandchildren. The coup happened, with Hawker Hunter jets attacking the presidential palace and President Salvador Allende committing suicide rather than surrendering.
Two days later Pinochet sent a helicopter to the army mountaineering school to collect his family, but their host, Colonel Cantuarias, was arrested and taken to the Military Academy in Santiago. He died there on October 3—the official account was that he had shot himself. But the Truth Commission, formed in 1990 to investigate human rights abuses during the Pinochet dictatorship, studied his case and “believes that this was the suicide of a person who was being subjected to so much pressure by government agents that such a decision offered an avenue of escape.”
Cantuarias was not the only Chilean army official to die in dubious conditions after the coup. Two senior army generals who, unlike the cynical and opportunistic Pinochet, were very much involved in the plotting to overthrow Allende would also die in highly suspicious circumstances. Their cases will be the subject of a future blog post.
Notes on the Americas 